"BEYOND LIMITS"

A Conversation with Professor David Bohm

Professor David Bohm (1917–1992) was undeniably one of the world's preeminent scientists.
Such people as J. Robert Oppenheimer, Albert Einstein, the Dalai Lama and J. Krishnamurti had
recognized and acknowledged the uniqueness of his mind.
But, in addition to being a great scientist and a great philosopher, David Bohm was also a great
friend. Not only to those of us who knew him personally, but to all the people of the world. His
passion for clarity, as it is reflected in his writings, was driven by a deep compassion for his
fellow human beings. One need only spend a little time musing over the direction his lifework
took, to comprehend this.
Dave (he preferred to be called 'Dave'-- such was the humility of the man) once told me that,
when a noted colleague asked him how he reconciled his earlier work in Quantum Mechanics
with the work he was now doing in the field of Consciousness, he answered, "To me, it's all one
movement." The following pages are a transcript of a conversation between Professor Bohm and
myself which was videotaped in Amsterdam, Holland in September of 1990, by TELEAC, the
Dutch Public Television Network. In our conversation, Professor Bohm traced that 'one
movement' from its earliest remembered origins, as a boy in Pennsylvania, to his most recent
work. It is, therefore, in the spirit of friendship and Dialogue (as he defined the word) that these
pages are offered.

William M. Angelos
Camp Hill, PA
2 November, 1992
 "BEYOND LIMITS" A Conversation with Professor David Bohm

WA: I guess the best way to begin, is to say that I know that we are old friends, and old friends
don't usually sit with one of them having notes on his lap to have a conversation... But this is a
special occasion... I thank you for sitting down with me this way and I hope you will forgive the
impropriety, if I read from some of these notes.

DB: (Laughing) It's alright...

WA: I have prepared some questions...

DB: Yes...

WA: The first question is: Some people might find it unusual for a theoretical physicist to have
an interest in things like Consciousness and the thinking process, but, in fact, your work reflects
a growing involvement with these and other associated subjects over a period of many years...
When did this interest begin? How and why has it become such an important aspect of your
present work? And can what you now explore still be considered Physics, theoretical or
otherwise?

DB: Well, I think, implicitly, my interest in Consciousness began very early. The earliest
incident that I can recall, happened at the age of eleven or twelve. I was with some boys and we
were in the mountains near Wilkes-Barre [Pennsylvania] crossing a rather rapidly flowing stream
and there were a lot of rocks we had to cross... and they were rather far apart and very small and
you couldn't just step across them. I felt very apprehensive; it was in a new situation...

But, I suddenly realized you had to jump from one to the other without stopping in between that
you were in a state of movement, pivoting on one rock while you move to the next... whereas I
usually thought of going from one step to another... I was mapping out the steps...

WA: And generally, that's the way you functioned?

DB: Yes, well, I think people generally do... (smiling)

WA: In other words, you think, before you-

DB: Well, you try to map it out a bit... and then it's more secure... and so on. But see? Here is a
case that wouldn't work... You had to do it from moment... to moment...
After that, I felt that it made a deep impression on me. This theme has reoccurred a lot in my
work, you know... that your Consciousness is going, moment by moment of awareness... and not
mapped out.

But I think that this was combined with some tendency to feel... …to want to go beyond limits..
When I was in this small town, the city of Wilkes-Barre, the nearest towns around it were called
Ashley, Sugar Notch and Warrior Run. So that's all I knew. I mean, I didn't know them but I
knew about them... So, when we went for a ride beyond Warrior Run, it seemed like going
beyond the end of the world, you see...

WA: I understand...

DB: I had this notion of - people talked about "the world" and I said: Where does it end?

WA: What answer did they give you?

DB: I don't remember... It wasn't terribly convincing, I suppose... (Both laugh)

So, I think that that notion used to fascinate me. I remember - in third grade, perhaps - there was
a sort of Nordic folk tale about some place which was "East of the Sun and West of the Moon"...
the idea being, that it was beyond all limits. That idea always fascinated me. So, I think that I
really didn't want to stay within limits, you see. And this was combined with my interest in
Consciousness which was mostly implicit at that time. I mean, I didn't very often think about it
explicitly...

WA: At what period of time was that chronologically... the Twenties or the Thirties?

DB: It was in the Twenties.

WA: In the Twenties, so the Depression hadn't-

DB: No, it hadn't come yet.

WA: Do you recall the Depression years?

DB: Oh, yes. There was a great deal of unemployment, suffering and people were out of jobs...
and banks were failing...

WA: You were in a coal mining area?

DB: In a coal mining area and people were talking about things getting very bad, you know...
Even revolution... Then Roosevelt came in and he introduced all these new measures which gave
the people hope... I think they lifted things up a little bit and gave people some hope that, at least,
it would get better...

So, I became very interested in politics, because I thought: We've got to do something about this
sort of thing... as well as about the growing danger of war, with people like Mussolini and Hitler.

WA: And still, your interest in science was developing along with that...

DB: Yes, it was. I used to go to the public library with a friend of mine and we'd get books about
chemistry and physics and so on and studied them. And I read the Scientific American about
atomic power... I read science fiction... The idea of atomic power fascinated me I thought that
that would be a solution to have unlimited energy... But anyway, your question was originally
about how I got into Consciousness...

WA: Right. (Both laughing)

DB: I remember in college once, asking myself the question: Are we totally determined or are
we free? Is our consciousness free or, is it determined like a machine? But at that time I
concluded that it didn't matter as long as we could, at least, feel free to do what we wanted to do.

But later, when I came to study Quantum Mechanics at Berkeley, in California, with
Oppenheimer, there were friends there who were very interested in Niels Bohr. Bohr called
attention to an analogy between thought and Quantum Mechanics... That in Quantum Mechanics,
whenever you observe something, you change it in an unpredictable and uncontrollable way...
You can't analyze it.

Now, if you try to look at your thought process, it changes too. That is, if you try to define your
thought it becomes unclear where it's going... and if it's going somewhere, then you're observing
[its] momentum and you don't define it. This was very similar to the behavior of the electron in
Quantum Theory. So I felt that there may be some connection between Consciousness and
Physics there...

WA: Later on, when you wrote your book on Quantum Theory you actually did introduce this-

DB: Yes, I brought that idea up...

WA: That was in 1952?

DB: 1951, it was published then.

WA: And then, in the book that followed it, 'Causality and Chance in Modern Physics', were
there elements in that about Consciousness?

DB: Well, they were mostly implicit. There I had the idea of this infinity of the Universe - not
really quantitative, but qualitative - an infinity of levels of chance and necessity. I said, that we
look for Laws that are necessary - like Newton's Laws - and we discover that there are limits to
them.

'Necessity' [is] what cannot be otherwise... And the limits [to 'necessity'] are due to
'contingencies' - what can be otherwise... Things are hound to depend on something else, right?

For example, if you have a feather floating in the wind... If the feather were in a vacuum, it
would fall. In the air, it's supported... The slightest breeze will shift it this way and that way, see?
It can be otherwise... In the vacuum it falls necessarily. So, by connecting with the broader
context, you get 'contingency'. And if these [contingencies] are very complicated and chaotic,
you get 'chance, where you can't predict at all.

WA: I know you connected those thoughts later on more specifically with respect to thought, but
following the line of your development of [the] Consciousness [theme] you went from writing
that book to the Special Relativity book.

DB: Yes. You see the point about the 'Causality' book, was that it brought up this potentially
unlimited nature of Reality, which would include Consciousness. So, it had something to do with
that. The idea being that Consciousness would have no specifiable limits, along with Nature... I
thought Nature and Consciousness were not only reflecting each other, but actually participating
in each other.

WA: Now, was that considered a unique perception at that time?

DB: I don't know how people considered it...

WA: I was wondering if you had any sort of response from it.

DB: Well, I got some favorable reviews of the book, but that wasn't one of the main points
stressed in it.

WA: I see... Now, in the book that followed, I know there was an appendix-
DB: Yes... That was in the sixties... I wrote a book on Special Relativity with an appendix which
I devoted to Perception. I said that there was an analogy between Perception and the way
Relativity treated things...

According to Relativity, everything was related to the way that you interacted with it, to observe
it, you see, and that's also [true] according to Quantum Mechanics, right? Now, the point about
Perception is that it's a dynamic process... We're constantly doing things and seeing what
happens, right? Handling objects and seeing what happens...

Everything must move: the eyeball must move in order to show light, to show form. It is an
active process, right?

Now, suppose we say, we are looking at a circular object, a solid, and as we walk around it, it
really looks like an ellipse. An artist draws it that way, with perspective...

But we know that [the ellipses] are different appearances of the circle. We say really, it's a circle,
which is solid, right? So, we could say the ellipses are appearance and the circle is the essence.

But then, scientists came along and said that's only an appearance too, because the circle is made
of a lot of atoms... It's really mostly open space [with] atoms moving there... Therefore, the
atoms are the essence.

But then, later on, other scientists came along and said these atoms are made of smaller objects...
They're mostly empty space... Atoms too, are appearances.

And then, these smaller objects were found to be made of quarks and so on... There were
electrons and protons and they're made of quarks... And then they said, these are fields... You
see, they're looking for a 'Theory of Everything', but it keeps on receding.

So, this suggests to me that everything - even our thoughts - are fundamentally appearances...
How things appear to the mind, right? And by combining many views of the object we
understand the object. Like the stereoscope: two views give three dimensions... Is that clear?

WA: Yes.

DB: So, by combining many views of the circle with this object, we get the notion of the circle.
By combining it with the scientific view we get another view on it, a circle which is made of
atoms... But then, another view is that the atoms are constituted of smaller particles, and so on...
The more views we get, that we can integrate and make coherent, the deeper our understanding
of the reality is... But, I say the reality, the essence would be called the true being... That, really,
we never really get hold of, right? It's unlimited. Everything… every view is limited. It's like a
mirror looking this way, that way, another many mirrors each one gives a view, but a limited
view, right?

So I said: 'theories' don't give final true knowledge. They give a way of looking at it. The very
word 'theoria', in Greek, means 'theater', it has the same root... And, so, [a theory] is sort of a
theater of the mind that gives insight into the thing. And, therefore, you can say that,
fundamentally, Science is involved in a perceptual enterprise, not primarily gaining knowledge.
Though knowledge appears, knowledge is a by-product of it, by understanding the thing... In our
contact with it, as long as it is coherent, it shows that our understanding is correct.

You see we must distinguish between correct appearances and incorrect appearances... they're
illusory. Now, if an appearance is correct it is in some way related to the reality, but it's
evidently not the reality. The ellipses, if we understand their meaning, are the correct appearance
to the eye. Though it is not an ellipse, it is still correct.

WA: So, are you suggesting that this is an inherent aspect of the thinking process?

DB: Yes, that's right, of our whole perceptual process. Our thinking process should be called an
extension of our perception, when done rightly... And not, primarily, the accumulation of
knowledge, which we put into various records.

WA: Well, that's a rather profound statement. Could you repeat that again?

DB: Our thinking process... I would, perhaps, now make a distinction between thinking and
thought. 'Thinking' is an active verb.. 'think-ing'... It means you are doing something. One thing
you are doing is criticizing your thoughts, seeing whether they cohere. And if they don't, you
begin to change them and experiment with others. You get new intuitions, new insights.

And 'thought', is the past participle. It is what has been done. It goes on the record, somewhat
like a computer program, but that's not a very good analogy. I call it conditioning, you see.

If we take Pavlov and his dogs, the dogs would salivate when they saw food. He rang a bell [and
the dogs] associated [it] with the food... so later, they began to salivate just by the [sound of the]
bell. So, there's an elementary thought there... which was, whenever a bell rings... The first reflex
was whenever food is there, salivation occurs... That may have been built in instinctively. The
second reaction, which is conditioned, is, whenever the bell rings, salivation must occur. [The
dogs] did not have to go through this step of saying: This means the same as seeing the object,
right? Now, I think that is kind of an elementary thought. Every thought is active in that way.
So, if you say: Whenever this happens, I need to do this... Whenever X happens, I need to do Y...
Now, [with] that, you don't have to think. Immediately when X happens, you are already doing
Y, right? It's a reflex... Now, that is the nature of thought. And one reflex leads to another...

You say: Whenever I think this, I must conclude that... Whenever I conclude that, I must go to
the next step, you see... It may be established by association, or by other ways, like reasoning...
Where you try to organize it logically... Or, by similarities - association in Time is the simplest...
Association by similarity... Or, a connection by logic. But, once it's done, it's all the same... It 's a
reflex, you see. Logic is a reflex...

WA: It’s a learned… it becomes a learned [response]-

DB: Yes, and it has to be criticized, by watching for its coherence. A logical argument, [even]
when it looks very logical, is not always so. It is often incoherent. You have to be sensitive to
that, it's a perceptive process.

WA: Hmm... (obviously still somewhat overwhelmed) How much of that, of what we have just
discussed... Discussed?!... of what I have just listened to, was touched upon, going back to the
Special [Relativity book] ?-

DB: Yes... Well, it was rather implicit, quite a bit of it was touched upon...

WA: You mentioned Piaget-

DB: The work of Piaget, in which we say that the child is always learning. And seeing... [The
child] makes an action outwardly towards the object, and handles it... and he gets a perception.
Now... if the perception [of the action] does not cohere with the intention of the action, he's got
to change the action. He is constantly learning.

WA: You really mean 'cohere', right?

DB: 'Cohere'... Well, I mean hold together in a coherent way... so that if he expects a certain
result and he doesn't get it, it shows that he didn't understand, right. So he's got to change his
idea, or his intention. So, learning is the constant sensitivity to not getting the intended result,
and changing the intention so that you get the intended result.

WA: And that's a learning process...

DB: And, I say that happens not only in perception of the young child, [it happens] with the
animal... [with] the highest and most abstract logical thought... it's exactly the same...
WA: It follows the same sequence... It is sequential...

DB: Yeah. You see, this learning is a process. Now, it all depends if we base it entirely on
memory, on thought, what has been done... Then, there is no reason it should work. It will go
wrong... I mean, whenever anything changes, things are always changing... So, you need an
awareness and a sensitivity to incoherence, going beyond that. This is... the nature of thought,
you can see...

WA: This aspect of coherence and incoherence is really at the core of it all.

DB: Yes. Without coherence our actions are counter-productive... At least, they lead us to what
we don't want... They can lead us to all sorts of tragedy and suffering.

WA: I'd like to hold that thought, and come back to it, because I know you speak in terms of a
'Coherent Culture'- which is something that appears to be lacking at the present time - but, I'd
like to just complete the original question which was: Following your line [regarding
Consciousness] in your work in Physics... After the Relativity book came the book: 'Wholeness
and-

DB: 'Wholeness and the Implicate Order', Yes. Well, that was a further development. Now, I
should say... to understand that, we should mention, go back to your first question about why 1
am interested in Consciousness...

I began to go into philosophy in the late Forties. I became more interested in what is Causality
and so on. I became interested in more general questions... Some of these people in Berkeley
became interested in Dialectical Materialism. It seemed to have some valuable points. Namely,
that they considered everything in constant change and interrelationship, rather than static, which
was close to the view I wanted.

WA: It was also sort of an attempt to fuse Science and-

DB: Yeah, they tried to bring in Science, and so on. Now, I went to Brazil for a number of years,
where I met a man called Mario Schönberg, who was also interested in Marxism. And he advised
me to read Hegel, who was really the source of a lot of Marx's ideas. And when I got to Israel I
read Hegel's logic... There, I found something very interesting... Well, we all know that he was
saying: Watch thought as a process. In other words, it was really going along with my interests,
you see...

WA: In other words, don't be as much concerned with [thought's] content?

DB: Yes, Yes... You see, even when I was crossing the stream, I was really thinking of the
process. Not only the process of the body, but the process of... implicitly, the process of thought,
which was trapping me in the old way, right?.. So, it was because I thought in a certain way, that
I found [crossing] the stream difficult. As soon as I.. I had a kind of sudden shift of thinking and
then I crossed the stream quite easily. (DB smiles) And that was thinking, not thought. That was
an act. That went very fast, you see, in a fraction of a second. It was a perception...

WA: And then, an action...

DB: But, it was a perception at the level of thought, you see? You know... You had to move...
there was a case when you couldn't not map it all out... a case, where you had to be in
movement... from moment to moment, right? I only put that in words later... So, where were we?

WA: With Hegel.

DB: Oh, yes, Hegel. Well he says thought is a process. One key thing: He said, pay attention to
thought, you see, as you would to anything else. I think people don't do that. They say thought
just goes where it will... It seems to be something beyond attention. It just happens. What can
you pay attention to..? You have to pay attention to the order of the process.

WA: The order of the process.

DB: Now Hegel did that in the sense... He paid attention to the order of the development of
concepts through what he called... 'to posit the concept', you know, the 'thesis' and the negation
of it, the 'antithesis'. And then, he said these sort of nullify each other and a new concept
emerges, a 'synthesis'... However, it contains the old ones as sort of insubstantial forms.

WA: Was that a limited attempt at following [the process of thought]? Because he was limiting
himself [to 'concepts']?

DB: Yes. He was limiting himself to a very small part of thought, but still it was something
quite-

WA: The process was still perceived as process...

DB: Yeah. So he took thought as a process, which I think is a very radically different way from
most people… most philosophers. I don't know whether Marx did or not, take thought as a
process. He applied it to Society, and implicitly, he was doing it... But those who followed Marx
and Communism probably missed the point all together. (They laugh)
But anyway, the insight was very much clearer in Hegel, in spite of his rather difficult language.
So, we'll come back to the late Fifties and early Sixties... I was getting a bit uneasy about Science
and where it was going.

WA: Where was it going?

DB: Well, I felt Physics, in particular, was moving in the direction of simply wanting to calculate
results, you see, [to] have equations and calculate results... [Physicists were] saying, there was no
way to understand anything at all. That came out of what Bohr was saying.
Like, if you have an 'interference experiment'... You have two slits, and a beam of electrons
comes in, detected at a screen. Now, there's what is called the interference pattern... That is, you
get a statistical pattern of detection of electrons. Now, if one slit is open, you get a certain
pattern, if two are open you get another one.

Now, the point is that in certain points, when two slits are open, the pattern has zero intensity...
It's canceled at certain places and increased at others. It produces what is called 'fringes'. And if
these were waves you could understand it, by saying the waves from one slit cancel the other at
those places. But you always see electrons coming in as particles and they go out as particles, so
why should there be waves? You'd think they have to turn into a wave in between, right? What
Bohr said was 'no', that was beyond any possibility of description or conception, it just happened.
You could only calculate, statistically, what the results would be according to the 'Quantum
algorithm', as he called it

WA: And that adhered as a means of-

DB: Yes. Most people didn't really understand Bohr's subtlety. But that view was developing
anyway, and they said Physics is primarily concerned with getting equations and calculating
experimental results, right?

WA: And didn't that sort of fit in with the psychological period, the time, where results were
important... Post-war?

DB: Well, probably the whole Culture had been building up to it. But, the idea of understanding
this thing... Well, they didn't see the point, you see. So, they said: 'What more do you want?!'

WA: So, there was no attempt to understand what was going on... Just [get] the results.

DB: Yeah, they thought that this was all you could do and what more could anybody want,
anyway. (DB smiles)
WA: We're getting results.

DB: Yeah. So, well, I was unhappy with that, and I tried to talk another way in Physics. I was
kind of developing a kind of general Cosmology which I could understand. But most physicists
didn't see the point. I gave some talks and they said: 'I wonder what you're doing... Is this a kind
of mathematics?' They couldn't see why I was doing it. Not that they were badly disposed to it or
anything... They were just puzzled. (They laugh)

So I began to wonder... There were many times when I felt: I wonder if I should go on with this,
with Physics.

WA: By that time, of course, you had worked with Einstein. Had he been supportive of-

DB: Well, I didn't work with him, I had many discussions with him and we had correspondence.
Well, he supported the idea that we should look for some sort of Reality, which we are talking
about and not just have these calculations.

WA: I see. So, it was just you and him. (They laugh) In fact, there really was a dichotomy,
though. Most people just ignored that aspect.

DB: Yeah. Well, they thought... There were apparently proofs by a physicist called Von
Neumann, that this would be impossible, and so on. You see, in 1951, I developed another
interpretation, where it was possible to look at it as real... Where I said: the electron was both a
wave and a particle. So, when it went through the slits, the wave went through both slits, and the
electron went through one. But the wave would influence the particle afterward, and so it would
determine where it could arrive. Well, that's a typical example... It would work out, but people
did not want to consider it, because they said, unless it gave new results, they wouldn't think of
it, you see... (They both laugh).

I didn't think of the argument then, but the idea I proposed had been, in fact, proposed by De
Broglie in 1927... I didn't know about it then, I knew later. And he proposed it and it was
discussed at the Solvay Congress in 1927, where all of the leading physicists were... Einstein and
Bohr and Pauli and others, and they all jumped on it.

Einstein didn't like it, because he thought it was too simple and cheap. He didn't think it would fit
Relativity. The others just simply didn't like it, because they had other ideas of their own, you
see. So, they even made fun of it and I can't remember their terms, but... And then De Broglie got
discouraged and gave it up.
But, I wrote this paper, and after that De Broglie took it up again. In this paper, I answered those
objections that they made and developed the thing further, right? But, on the whole, it fell on the
rest of the Physics community like a thud on lead. (DB laughs)

WA: It appears that it has been revitalized... that perception... in recent times.

DB: Well, I've been continuing recently to develop it... I'm now writing a book on it with my
colleague, Basil Hiley. We're getting more interest from some of the philosophers of science and,
I don't know, from some physicists. I think, maybe, it will increase.

WA: I see. Well, we digressed to get to that point... To go back to the Sixties and we're still
following the line... We were on the 'Wholeness and the Implicate Order' book leading up to it.

DB: Yes, but this is part of it... You see, at that point I got in touch with this man Krishnamurti.
In the public library there was a book, and in that book there was a phrase, you know, 'The
observer and the observed'... I thought this fellow would… was on the same line as I am.

WA: Let's pause there for a moment, now that’s a giant leap for some of us. As I understand it,
'the observer and the observed' had been introduced as a perception by Werner Heisenberg.

DB: Well, Bohr first, and then Heisenberg.

WA: And then, taken up by Heisenberg...

DB: Well, both about the same time, in different ways... And that was my interest, the oneness of
the observer and the observed... Which was due, according to them, to the indivisible quantum
link between observer and observed.

WA: Really.

DB: And thus, was partly responsible for the analogy between Thought and Quantum process,
which I mentioned before... You got it?

WA: Right. So, you were in the library one afternoon-

DB: Well, actually it was my wife who was in there, and she was the one who found the book
and saw the phrase. She always objects to my bringing it up. (They both laugh) But anyway, I
read the book very avidly and I said, okay, I must talk with this man. Well, I wrote to the
publisher and apparently [Krishnamurti] had been ill for a while, but he was coming to England
to talk.
WA: What year was this?

DB: 1961.

WA: 61.

DB: So, I met him in London and he didn't know any physics, but he still listened to me talk
about it. (Both laughing) With very great interest and-

WA: So, it was a warm attraction to each other, from the very beginning.

DB: Yeah. We sort of had an instant communication. You may ask, you know, why was I
interested in a man like Krishnamurti. People may have thought of him as a mystic.

Well, I was getting interested in all sorts of broader philosophy then. I had the notion that... I
think part of my whole Cosmology was that the mind and matter were interconnected, two sides
of one thing. Therefore, we not only had a connection to the world through the senses, but in
some deeper level. I thought maybe somebody like Krishnamurti, with all the perceptions that he
had, which I could read about, would perhaps have been in that, had [discerned] that possibility.

WA: And those perceptions manifested in everyday life, as he was trying to explain... those-

DB: Well, it seemed to me, he sort of perceived directly some sort of Wholeness... this
wholeness of the Universe and the observer and the observed, and so on. So, I didn't know quite
what it meant, but it sort of looked as if it would be important. If you'll remember, I always felt I
would like to get beyond all limits. I mean, I didn't want to stay within the limits of Physics as
physicists had defined it. I was already getting to the point where I said I couldn't stay there any
longer.

WA: In fact, you had even thought about leaving Physics.

DB: Yes. Even in the early Fifties... late Forties rather... just after the war, that attitude became
prevalent. I was thinking of it. But I didn't actually leave Physics. But anyway, I did follow this
thing up with Krishnamurti, and we met every year when he came to London. And later, I went
to Switzerland were he gave talks. Later, he established a school, near London, and I used to take
part in that.
Now, we had many discussions, you see. I think partly through these discussions, although not
entirely, I came to this idea of the Implicate Order. He used to greatly encourage me in that
direction. I may have had the idea before in a very germ form...

WA: Could we pause there for a moment, again. The term 'implicate', it seems to be connected to
the word 'imply'.

DB: Yes, the word 'implicate' is the same root as 'imply'. It means 'enfold', in Latin, and
'explicate' - 'to unfold'. So, if you say one thought 'implies' another, it means that the thought is
'enfolded' [in the other], right? And [it] 'unfolds' ?

WA: In other words, if I am speaking of something, it may imply something else...

DB: Yeah, but [something] that's already enfolded in your mind.

WA: Right.

DB: And it comes out. It becomes 'explicit'. Now, the idea was that... you can think, say, of a
piece of paper which you fold up many times and you make little cuts in it... When you unfold it,
a whole pattern appears. [There are] many other ideas, examples that come to mind, but I haven't
time really.

WA: Essentially, you are saying that the enfolded part would be the-

DB: You have it all together and then it unfolds... But then, there is a reverse process of it
'enfolding' again.

WA: Enfolding again.

DB: Now, I saw that you could understand the Quantum Mechanics in terms of that process...
That instead of saying an electron, for example, is a particle just moving along, you could think
that there is a wave coming in... enfolding... or it's really unfolding to a point... it's enfolded in the
whole universe... Then it folds back. Then another wave comes in, at a slightly different point...
You get a series of points that are very close together so we imagine they're a particle, right?...
but, because of that wave nature, from which it comes, you understand... the wave/particle
nature... That is, it's a wave [and a particle]... You understand that?

WA: And because we're used to seeing things in movement on this 'macro' level, the assumption
has been that that's the way the electron-
DB: Yes, we've been extrapolating the way the macro level works. And [then], when you found,
in Quantum Mechanics, [that] it didn't make sense, you said: There's nothing more to do, except
calculate, right?

WA: Could we... Again, the term 'quantum' itself has its base in-

DB: Well, the 'quantum'... That's one of the features of 'quantum'... The quantum has its base in
the fact that energy is transferred in discrete jumps or 'quanta' rather than continuously...

WA: I see.

DB: Now, you can see that some sort of quantum appears here... the wave comes to a point, then
there is a jump to another point. See one thing - according to quantum theory - was that the
electron could go from one state to another without passing in between. Now you said: That is an
utter mystery, right?

But you see, if the wave comes in to this point… then it spreads out... it could come in to another
point. So, therefore, it needn't look so mysterious.

WA: Is it possible to state then, that that's the way thought, the thinking process-

DB: Yes, that we could anticipate by saying: That's how the thinking process goes... It's enfolded
in your consciousness… it unfolds to a certain thought, folds back and then the next thought
appears different. A series of thoughts, not too different, seem to be continuous, right.

WA: Is that were the now popular term, 'quantum leap' has its origins?

DB: Well, those jump, yes. They take the idea of a jump that doesn't pass in between.

WA: There is no way of knowing how it gets from point A to point B, on a macro level.

DB: No. That jump is creative, you see. In other words... From this explanation I gave, [it's
possible] to say the 'quantum jump' or 'quantum leap' is a creative process.

WA: And, you are suggesting that in the Implicate Order that it manifests in another place, as
opposed to traveling from point A to point B.

DB: Yeah

WA: So that was the basic line of reasoning in the 'Wholeness and the Implicate Order' book.
DB: Yeah... [A reasoning] which connected Consciousness with Matter, because they had a
parallel process.

WA: In other words, at that basic implicate level, all-

DB: All existence... all being...

WA: All being was-

DB: Was in one order... The Implicate Order, because it’s the order of enfoldment that counts,
not the order of movement on a line.

WA: So, the greater the action itself really takes place in the implicate...

DB: Yes, and it manifests in the explicate.

WA: And, it manifests in the explicate.

DB: Yes, but it's part of the same tradition of Science, saying that what we thought was the
essence is now the appearance.

WA: Say that again. That's Okay, what we thought was the essence-

DB: -is now seen to be another appearance. Namely, that the particle which was explaining
everything as the essence of Reality...

WA: is [an] appearance.

DB: Is also an appearance.

WA: Is also... in addition to, its being an essence-

DB: No, everything is both essence and appearance in that sense...

WA: Oh, of course, I see.

DB: But, you see all appearances are essential.

WA: (Laughing) Otherwise we wouldn't be able to see them...

DB: But, the essence as the true being is unknown, right?

WA: Ahah!

DB: Even the Implicate Order is merely a concept. So, even that should turn out to be an
appearance. But we say, by bringing in deeper, more penetrating appearances we understand
better... and that's all. We are never going to be able to grasp the whole.

WA: And that has its own implications in understanding the world, as we perceive it.

DB: Yes, yes. Well, see, this is against the view, [in] which a large number of physicists [are]
coming out and saying we are going to get a 'Theory of Everything', you see...
Now, in the 19th Century, after Newton had been so successful for several centuries, one of the
leading physicists of the time, Lord Kelvin said: It’s no use for young people to go into physics...
it's nearly finished... it's only a matter of the next decimal point being refined... try something
else. (laughing) So, he said there are two small clouds on the horizon. The negative results of the
Michelson/Morley Experiment and the problems of Black Body Radiation. These were the right
clouds, because each one of these led to a Revolution, one to Relativity, the other to Quantum.

WA: They were the wrong ones for Kelvin, unfortunately.

DB: He chose his clouds very well, but he thought they were small clouds.

WA: And, in fact, the Revolutions--

DB: --came out of them. Now, we still have much bigger clouds on the horizon today.

WA: As a result of...

DB: No,. No... Physics has developed onward into all sorts of new things and a lot of things are
not understood today... more serious than that was then. People still talk of the 'Theory of
Everything', they live in Hope, you see.

WA: I see. And this 'Theory of Everything' does it somehow tie into the Unified Theory that
Einstein was-

DB: Well, that would be... try to be a realization of Einstein, yeah... There's no harm in having a
Unified Theory, but just don't say it covers everything, because it will be also an appearance.
WA: And essentially, you're saying that all Theories are that... a way of looking at things as
opposed to an Absolute Truth.

DB: It will be an appearance which reflects, in principle, everything, you see, the Whole, right?
We have all sorts of mirrors by which we can see different things... So, this will be an
appearance of a Whole which may even include ourselves... how see ourselves in this mirror,
too.

WA: Okay, can I make a 'quantum leap' and suggest that because... if such is the case, then to
take our thinking process as absolute is... is not right, is a mistake.

DB: Yes.

WA: And the results of the thinking process as well.

DB: Yes... Just from the scientific point of view alone, it's a mistake. But it's a mistake... if you
look directly at the process, you could see how serious that mistake is.

WA: And so now at the present time you find that your work on Consciousness is, parallel to the
other work you are doing, and, in fact, possibly paramount. That the book you're bringing out
with Mr. Hiley.

DB: Well, that's on Quantum Theory. That's really an attempt to bring out some of the stuff that I
did thirty years ago, forty years ago.

WA But it has to do with an approach other than Bohr's approach.

DB: Yes, that's right.

WA: Could you explain the difference between the two approaches?

DB: Well, Bohr's approach is to say: Nothing can be said about it at all... but just to calculate,
right? This attempts to give a concept of it. Another appearance, let's call it. (Smiling)

WA: Another appearance, but it's heavily leaning towards meaning, as I understand it.

DB: Yes. Well it gives more meaning, in the sense that if we have the Implicate Order and so on,
with Consciousness in a similar order, we have a creative order which has more meaning, you
see, in this mechanical order it would be very hard to get much meaning. Or in the order of just
calculating things. As Stephen Weinberg has said, [he's] one of the leading theoretical physicists
of the time, that: The more they look into the Cosmos the less they see meaning. That's
inevitable, if you say, anyway, you are just calculating.

WA: And do you think that perception is permeating our society?

DB: Well, it has an affect, because ultimately, Society is highly affected by Science as it once
was by Religion, which now is no longer the source of our world view. Science is the source of
the world view that Religion used to give. Now, the view of Totality has great power because the
view of Totality, in principle, has Supreme Value. God… what would He be? He made
everything, so He has the highest possible value. Now, if the Universe, which has the highest
possible value, is meaningless... (Smiling) …then what else can have value? (DB laughs)

WA: But, in fact, in pursuing your avenue of inquiry, it is essentially attempting to bring
meaning back into Life.

DB: Well, see, there is no reason for them to do what they are doing. The Universe isn't what
they say it is. There is room enough for all sorts of unlimited meaning, you see. If you say the
Universe is, even Matter is creative... then even much more so, in Mind.

WA: Are there aspects of Consciousness in the new book that is coming out. Are they-

DB: The last chapter will discuss Consciousness.

WA: That brings us up-to-date with the respect to the line that you've followed from the
beginning. My next question is connected with it: You've likened your own perception of how
we comprehend Reality, to Plato's 'Allegory of the Cave', could we explore that element, a bit?

DB: Well, in Plato's 'Allegory of the Cave', people were chained and looking at the shadows on
the cave and trying to see regularities in the shadows. You could imagine them doing
calculations, saying that there's a certain probability that this shadow would become that
shadow… and so on. Now, Plato suggested that if they were able to turn around and look at the
light... well, first of all, they would be blinded... But eventually, they would see that these
shadows were only shadows. I would say that, in some sense that whatever we see is a kind of a
shadow... it's an appearance. But to understand that they are shadows and that we can get more
and more appearances, is crucial.

WA: And, [we] get lost in the shadows, as it were.

DB: Yeah... Well, if we take the shadows to be the reality... The essential point is to see that the
shadows are not the reality but they still throw light… well, you can't say that a shadow throws
light... but they still may be relevant to Reality. If you understand what they are. The shadow
gives you-

WA: Oh. If you understand it as a shadow as opposed to the ultimate reality.

DB: Yes... The shadow gives you information about the reality.

WA: And with respect to 'the light' itself?

DB: Well, the light would be the Unknown. In Consciousness, 'the light ' is a kind of Intelligence
which is.. which would be deeper even, than in the Implicate Order... its enfolded and beyond,
right?

WA: So, the Implicate Order has other orders beyond it?

DB: Yes, well there are higher orders, [other] implicate orders. But, eventually it sort of goes off
to a horizon... which we can't grasp. We say, that's the source of the Light of Intelligence.

WA: I see. And that would be what in the past has been known as 'the Unknowable' and 'the
Ineffable'?

DB: Yes, 'the Ineffable' and so on...

WA: So, this would be a scientific pointing to the Ineffable.

DB: Yes.

WA: (Laughing) Well that's a revelation, in itself, I would think.

DB: Yes. I would say that that light is needed to be thrown on thought. If it isn't, thought is a
bunch of shadows which will be taken for realities.

WA: And we can really prettify those shadows, so that they become totally mesmerizing... And
we are lost in that, as the real reality.

DB: Yeah.

WA: Following that allegorical train, I know that, not long ago, I once heard you describe a
scenario for a Science Fiction movie, that is essentially an artistic metaphor for our present state
of consciousness... Do you remember the story?
DB: Yes. Well, it was a story about very advanced beings from some distant galaxy who were
journeying through space... And their way of exploring was to send highly developed robots to
explore the Planets. Each robot had an onboard computer to deal with local problems... But,
ultimately, there was a Central Computer that was behind it all.

These robots came to a certain Planet and they started exploring, and they went into a very deep
cave and lost contact with the Central Computer. And they began to think independently, you
see... And they got rather confused and began to think that they were independent beings. And
then, they came out and they started... Each one [thought it] was independent, so they all started
to fight each other. They did all sorts of things to each other. The beings at the Center [at the
Central Computer] didn't know what to do. There was no way to force them [the exploring
robots] to do anything. Only information could work... And [the exploring robots] were already
rejecting the information from the Central Computer. [They were] saying, 'It doesn't exist,
because we are independent.' Therefore, they-

WA: So, in fact, that information that was being transmitted was real information... Which would
imply that force or power could not be used because it would not be...

DB: That's right... It would make no sense. So, therefore, from the Central ship, they sent more
robots to talk directly to the other robots. These robots were either worshipped as God or else
they were destroyed... or both.

WA: Or both...

DB: Yes... As a matter of fact, the problem is still there. They have not yet solved that problem.

WA: In fact, we haven't... Which brings me to my next question: Those robots in the cave
created a sense of them being independent of any other Source, as it were. We might liken that
state as 'the I'.

DB: 'The Self... yeah

WA: 'The Self... The question is: Does 'the I' really exist? Or is it an illusion? If it is an illusion,
how is it that we appear to be able to create or think a thought? Is 'the I' really separate from
thought?

DB: Yes, well to put it briefly, I'd say 'the I' as we know it, is not separate from thought. That 'the
I', which feels itself to be separate, is thought. Now, maybe... There was an ancient view of 'the
Self which was that: 'I am the unknown'... 'I am an unknown which is constantly revealing
itself... Which is different from the ordinary concept of 'the Self’. Which is something known,
with identity. The Self is something with identity over time and [is therefore] limited, right? It's
supposed to be. But, also, unlimited because you have this megalomania, this wish to make the
Self... it doesn't want to stay limited.

Now... How could the Self be thought? You have to see how thought works. Let's come back...
First of all, if you see a television program with a telephone in there and the bell rings, your
thought immediately attributes it to the image and you experience it coming from the image.
There's nothing there in the image, at all. But suppose nobody gets up to answer the phone.
There is an incoherence. And you wonder, where is it [the sound of the bell] coming from. It
may be coming from the next room... Then, you see it differently, right? The point is that thought
can attribute [independent phenomena] to real things to put shape and form and figure into them
and make them seem like something else.

Like, if you take the rainbow, it is nothing but rain falling and light reflecting off the raindrops,
right. But you see a bow… there's a figure thrown onto the raindrops... Is that clear?

WA: Yes.

DB: Everybody sees the same bow, that's proof... it must be there. But it’s not there.

WA: But, in fact, everyone sees a different one.

DB: Everyone sees his own rainbow, but very similar.

WA Everyone sees his own rainbow.

DB: But similar... That's how... This chair is seen the same way. So, there's an appearance which
is not an appearance of that bow is not a correct appearance of reality.

WA: And yet, there is a tacit agreement that it is.

DB: Well, people now know it's not there, you see...

WA: I didn't know that... (They both laugh)

DB: But, they used to say: 'Chase the rainbow and find the pot of gold at the end'

WA: Of course. But, I don't know that it 's common knowledge that what we're all looking at is
different rainbows.
DB: But at least they're not... they're all related to a chair... But in the case of the rainbow,
they're only related to the drops of rain, not to a bow. Now, this is crucial because if you can
throw onto the drops of rain a bow, you could throw on any shape onto the drops of rain. And
everybody might agree that that's it.

Now Consciousness is full of all sorts of events going on... feelings... you know, little things
going on here and there. And thought throws onto it a shape called 'Me', right? At a center... You
may feel it to be in the solar plexus or the chest or the head.

WA: Can we stop again. Are you saying thought projects that?

DB: Yes, as it projected the rainbow.

WA: So, thought creates 'the Me', rather than 'Me' creating the thought?

DB: Yes. If you don't see that happening you will treat that as real and give it apparent reality.
The whole being will take actions on that basis which seem to be coming from the center. As the
telephone sound seems to be coming from the telephone, from the television image when it
couldn't possibly be doing so...

WA: But, it has to be gaining some kind of strength, if it's capable of thinking about a specific.

DB: Well, the strength comes from your whole being. There is... Remember the nature of
thought as conditioned reflex, one thought leads to another, and another... You don't have to do
anything.

WA: [Thought is] doing it for you.

DB: Remember, thought is conditioned reflex at a very high subtle level. It just goes by itself,
but it has in it the thought that thought is being produced by a center which it calls 'Me'. And all
the feelings which should belong to that center are thrown onto Consciousness as if [they were]
from 'Me', right?

WA: And our society reinforces that...

DB: Everybody says the same [thing], like everybody sees the same rainbow, everybody sees the
same 'Self’, whether it's there or not.

WA: Then, we can create concepts that everyone 'sees'... like nationalism...
DB: That's right. Yes, in fact, later on it becomes all important, [the concept is] regarded as
central and supremely important. All sorts of powerful feelings will arise, if it's questioned. You
see, now, it all goes on by itself ... and, you see... ...there's a deeper being, I say, which can...
which is… that being which may be able to reveal itself anew... rather than being a fixed being…
it's deep in the Implicate Order... in the Infinite...

WA: That being is not an 'I'.

DB: Well, we don't know what it is, it's unknown... As long as all this is going on, how are you
going to tell? I mean it's like all the lights in the city… you can't see the Universe.

WA: Surely, I remember you mentioned about being in Las Vegas... Could you repeat that?

DB: Yes, just simply... You could be in Las Vegas with a vast number of flashing lights and you
could never see the stars. You might imagine that there is no Universe other than Las Vegas.
Similarly, you might imagine that the universe we experience through the Self is the Universe.
But, in fact, it may be just thrown on like the rainbow.

WA: And, in fact, within the socio-cultural patterns that we have established, there is that 'razzle-
dazzle' happening all the time

DB: Yes. Noise... lights… what-not... excitement...

WA: Mm-hmm. Let me just take this one step further... I'll go back to the book 'Causality and
Chance in Modern Physics', because there you did mention, to my knowledge, for the first time,
'necessity and contingency'. How do 'necessity' and 'contingency work together to perpetuate
what appears to be Self-deception?

DB: Yes...This is a crucial point. The word 'necessity'... 'necessary' means 'that it cannot be
otherwise’, right? And 'contingency’ is the opposite, 'what can be otherwise'. The Latin root of
'necessary' is 'necesse’, meaning 'don't yield'. So when you think something is necessary you also
get a feeling of an attitude... Not yielding, right? It's what cannot be turned aside. Now, it's very
important in our thought to make [an] order of priorities, of necessity, so that A turns aside for B,
and B turns aside for C, and so on.

WA: And that happens mechanically?

DB: Well, either intelligently or mechanically... some things are more important than others... I
say this is necessary, but that's more important, so I do that. But, that can go wrong. We can give
extreme necessity to triviality, right?
WA: (Laughing) All the time!

DB: The point to remember is that necessity is not just an intellectual concept, it is a feeling, an
urge, a drive. The will is determined by what you think is necessary. The more necessary you
think it is, the stronger the will and the stronger the desire. So the whole movement... The idea
that thought is only thought is wrong. You see, all these conditioned reflexes go on together.
Now, necessity may be perceived. I'm not saying it's only a reflex... It can be perceived afresh.
But, it goes onto the conditioning. It becomes a set of reflexes, right? Now, the reflex of necessity
works without your thinking, by the feeling of the urge, the will, the drive. Intense will, drive,
need.

WA: And again, the values applied to those 'necessities' can be arbitrary.

DB: That's right. But they vary. They say, that which is absolutely necessary would be supremely
valuable and take priority over everything else. If you think God is there, then you might give
His Will Absolute Necessity. On the other hand, the State may take Absolute Necessity, or
something else... Your personal ambition... Your desire to expand your ego - to be a
megalomaniac... Anything! To make money... Anything could take Absolute Necessity... even
the most trivial pursuit.

WA: What makes it absolute in our minds?

DB: We say something is necessary. Now we start to make a conditioned reflex saying that we
did it this time, this time, this time... There is a tendency now to say that it's always so. When it's
always so, then it's a small step to say it is [absolutely] necessary. If you say it's always
necessary then it's Absolute. Step by step we slide into 'absolute necessity'.

WA: Which is at the core of Self-deception.

DB: That's right. Because if there is 'absolute necessity', then it is absolutely necessary to keep
on thinking that this idea is absolutely necessary. And it cannot be questioned. And therefore,
you have to distort... and deceive yourself

WA: Hmm. And does that seem to be prevalent at the present time?

DB: Well, all times that we know of, it has been prevalent. You see, people have always
believed what they wanted to believe... to make them feel better. They have always accepted that
their religious beliefs are right, their beliefs about the State or the Emperor are right... about
whatever they are doing.
WA: At the present time in society, nationalism, for instance.

DB: Well, nationalism, religious fanaticism...

And also, there is a belief that it is absolutely necessary to have economic growth, when we
know that if everybody were to grow at that rate over the whole world, we would destroy the
Planet like a swarm of locusts. See, we have to question that 'necessity'. It may kill us, right?

WA: Hmm. (A Beat of Silence)

Along those lines...

I believe it was Archimedes who once said: 'Give me a place to stand and a stick long enough...
and I will move the world'. If you were given a few moments of Planetary Silence, a place to
stand… or sit… and a megaphone large enough... what message would you convey, in an
attempt to move the world in the direction it must go in order to survive?

DB: I would say we've got to pay attention to thought... and to communicate our
communications... because these 'absolute necessities' interfere with communication, so we can't
listen to each other and can't work together. And if we can't work together, then no idea is going
to be of any use.

WA: So, we have to begin... square one would be... paying attention to thought, itself.

DB: And how it keeps us apart

WA: And that leads us to this notion of Dialogue as you've defined the word.

DB: Yes, this Dialogue is... The Greek root, 'dialogos'... 'logos', which means 'word'... but 'the
meaning [of the word]'… 'Dia' means 'through'.. So you can think of meaning flowing among
people.

I gave the example, of an anthropologist I read many years ago, that studied a North American
Indian tribe of hunter/gatherers and they would sit in a circle and just talk and talk without an
agenda, without decisions, without authority, without anything. And they would end up, it
seemed, with no conclusion and [yet] they would all know what to do. They kept on talking...
They didn't just talk once, right? They would talk regularly.

WA: I see.
DB: If we are able to do that, we would... See, the main problem is, people are not able to listen
and talk with each other... and therefore, how can they get together.

WA: Do you feel, at the present.... people are listening to each other with regard to the
international situations?

DB: Not very much, no.

WA: Which leads me to what I call my 'bonus' question... It pertains to specifically, to the events
of today... As they are happening, as we get together:
On a recent program on CNN, journalist Robert Novak was interviewing Dr. Gerald Post, a
Professor of Psychiatry and Political Psychology at George Washington University in the United
States... For more than twenty years, Dr. Post prepared psychological profiles of world leaders
for Presidents and other senior United States officials.
Now, here is the first question Mr. Novak had: 'Dr. Post, put simply, is Saddam Hussein a
megalomaniac, a mad man, or a rational seeker of power?'
Dr. Post answered this way, 'He is certainly not a mad man, he is very much a rational seeker of
power, he has, however, many personality features which make him an extremely dangerous
man. Try as I might, I find no evidence of Conscience in him. His ambitions are boundless for
power.'
First, [regarding] the question that Mr. Novak asked... Is there such a thing as a rational seeker of
power?

DB: Well, I would ask why should anybody seek power. Is there a good reason? Is there a valid
reason? I mean, what does he want it for? There have been many, at least I have heard there have
been twelve, fifteen attempts to assassinate him... Eventually one is likely to succeed. Seekers of
power often get assassinated. They suffer a great deal, and so why do they do it? There must be
something... I think the world confuses us from early childhood, you see?

There was Alexander the Great, and he apparently had a very bad relationship with his father and
his mother... Hated his father and he probably identified with his mother... and he probably felt
he had to show his father something... and [that] gave him the energy to conquer the world...
Tremendous energy... He commanded absolute devotion from his troops, and so on I mean, he
was on a much higher level than Saddam, obviously.

WA: But could that action be considered, rational?

DB: No, because I must ask why he did it?

WA: Oh, I see, there was an irrationality because of the-

DB: Yes. There is some incoherence in this whole thing. Why do you need power, you see. What
for? I mean, if you ask why? Because there is a thought in you of 'absolute necessity' for power.
What gave you that thought? I mean, probably some experience that you were powerless.

WA: Could it be Society itself?

DB: Society constant tells people they are no good, that they're worthless... 'You're nothing,
you're just little you, and you ought to be more', and so on. And also in particular cases, like
troubles with fathers, mothers, teachers, you know, friends...

WA: So Society embellishes the notion that power is something to strive for.

DB: At least it creates in the person the feeling that he is powerless... and that if he had power he
would be alright. It is a very disturbing feeling of being powerless.

Now, when people feel powerless they say: 'I need power". I say: 'I think they need it like they
need a hole in the head'. (Both laughing) What they've got to do is find out why do they feel
powerless.

WA: So it comes from their powerlessness that they feel that they need power.

DB: Yeah. That is, their belief in the absolute truth that they are powerless... They are totally
convinced that they are powerless, right?

WA: Which is why they strive for power.

DB: Yes. That's why they don't have any power, because they are convinced they don't have any.

WA: Which, in fact can never be satisfied.

DB: Yeah, they're never satisfied because it's always on the conditioned record as a reflex... that I
need power… to make as much power as you could imagine... Like Alexander the Great said just
before he... when he was right at the top. He was feeling sad because there were no more worlds
to conquer.

WA: That's tough. (They both laugh)

WA: Well, Professor Bohm I want to thank you very much... Really... I appreciate the time
you've taken to be with me... And I hope we can do it again.

DB: I hope so, yeah...